Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 18.djvu/260

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240
THE FRUITS OF ENLIGHTENMENT

Scene X. The same and Yákov (running in with a prescription).

Yákov. Semén, run to the apothecary's, lively! Get these powders for the lady!

Semén. But he told me not to leave.

Yákov. You will have plenty of time. Your business begins after tea. Tea and sugar!

First Peasant. You are welcome! (Semén exit.)

Scene XI. The same, without Semén.

Yákov. I have no time! Fill up a cup for company's sake!

First Peasant. We have preposed a conversation how that your lady acted so proudly in the morning.

Yákov. Oh, she is dreadfully hot! She is so hot, she forgets herself. Sometimes she bursts out weeping.

First Peasant. Here is, for example, what I wanted to ask. In the morning she preposed something about microtes: "You have brought microtes, microtes with you," she said. What is this microte to be applied to?

Yákov. Oh, you mean the microves. They say they are a kind of bugs from which all diseases come. She meant to say that you had them on you. Oh, how they washed and sprinkled the place where you had been standing! There is a medicine from which they all die,—I mean the bugs.

Second Peasant. Where are these bugs on us?

Yákov (drinking tea). They say they are so tiny, you can't see them even through glasses.

Second Peasant. How does she know they are on me? Maybe there is more of that nastiness upon her.

Yákov. Go and ask them!

Second Peasant. I suppose it is all nonsense.

Yákov. Of course, nonsense. But the doctors have